Post Investment Summer Associate

Organization

Acumen

Deadline for Applications

03/04/2016

Contact Information

Serena Grewal

Acumen is looking for a Summer Associate to support the work of our Post Investment team helping address barriers to scale. This is an outstanding opportunity for someone with an entrepreneurial, action-orientated individual who has a passion for sales, marketing and talent development.

Acumen

Acumen is changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies, leaders and ideas. We invest patient capital in businesses whose products and services are enabling the poor to transform their lives. Founded by Jacqueline Novogratz in 2001, Acumen has invested more than $88 million in 82 companies across Africa, Latin America and South Asia. We are also developing a global community of emerging leaders with the knowledge, skills and determination to create a more inclusive world. This year, Acumen was named one of Fast Company’s Top 10 Most Innovative Not-for-Profit Companies. Our work is pioneering new partnership models to add-value to our investee (Unilever ELII and SAP’s CEO Fellowship) as well as developing core competencies in-house to address key barriers to scale (sales and marketing, talent development and impact assessment).

The Portfolio team is responsible for finding, vetting, and managing investments in game-changing social enterprises that serve the poor in our six portfolio sectors: water, health, housing, energy, agriculture, and education. The Portfolio team also provides management support to existing companies in our portfolio through tracking key performance metrics and hands-on relationship management. Fast-moving social enterprises, strapped for cash and time, have difficulties activating the high-quality support to address their needs. The Post Investment team has developed a platform to add-value across venture stage, sector and geography.

Responsibilities

The Summer Associate will help with specific post-investment management projects addressing the distinct challenges facing our portfolio companies, who are many times operating in newly created markets or difficult geographies. The Associate may also have the opportunity to help the portfolio team implement new investment processes and performance evaluation across the organization, and help manage and improve portfolio operations on a global level.

More specifically, you will have the opportunity to:
• Lead the development of human resources, public relations and other online toolkits to support 70+ Acumen investee companies
• Lead the development of Post Investment training materials to support Acumen’s Global Retreat
• Lead research for corporate partnerships development at a global and regional level;
• Participate on a global team to develop of a new marketing product leveraging Acumen’s Lean Data Initiative;
• Participate on a global team to develop a strategic financing guide to support Acumen’s Portfolio team anticipate the need for follow-on capital;

Qualifications & Characteristics

Minimum qualifications:
• First year MBA candidate
• Expertise in sales and marketing or talent development and training
• 3-5 years of experience in management consulting, venture capital, or startup operations. At least 1 year of experience in social enterprise / start-up environments strongly preferred.
• Strong ability to take initiative and produce valuable results in conditions of uncertainty – a gutsy “role-your-sleeves-up” attitude.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills; capability to synthesize information and make clear, compelling recommendations in a succinct manner to Acumen colleagues and investees.
• Emerging market experience preferred
• Capacity to work with across different countries and cultures

The ideal candidate will also meet the following criteria:
• Solid operational skills, including ability to work and deliver projects independently, proactively and under pressure
• Exceptional relationship and interpersonal skills: courtesy, tact, patience and strong team orientation
• Commitment to, and enthusiasm for, the organization’s mission and business model, and respect for our core values: generosity, accountability, humility, audacity, listening, leadership, integrity, respect
• Curious – always questioning, always probing, and never blindly accepting
• Demonstrated commitment to serving the poor
• Ability to thrive when there is ambiguity, remain cool-headed when there are curve balls, and withstand the tests of a rapidly changing environment with resilience and resolve
• Moral Imagination: The humility to see the world as it is, and the audacity to imagine the world as it could be. It also includes but is not limited to the following:
o Displaying high level of empathy in all relationships and encounters
o Possessing deep self-awareness and ability to identify own strengths and weaknesses
o Actively listening and focusing on hearing what others are saying
• A sense of humor (really)

1. What do you understand to be two of the top operational challenges facing social enterprises that are trying to scale?
2. What is the toughest decision you had to make?
3. What would you most like to learn from this role that would help you in the future?